Start with what you're protecting
Before any product conversation, write down what a security incident at your office would actually look like. Theft of equipment? Access to client records or the server room? After-hours entry? Someone walking through reception unchallenged? A dispute where you need to prove who was where? Each answer points at a different part of the system — and some answers point at procedure rather than hardware.
This list is the specification. Every later decision — how many doors get access control, where cameras point, whether the alarm is monitored — should trace back to it. If a proposed feature doesn't answer something on the list, it is decoration.
Who needs access, and how does it change?
The second question sizes the access control system. How many staff, and what is turnover like? Do contractors, cleaners and building services need after-hours entry? Do visitors move escorted or free? Are there internal zones — server room, records, management — that need tighter control than the front door?
The pattern of change matters as much as the headcount. An office of long-tenured staff behind one door has simple needs. High turnover, many contractors, or multiple zones mean credential administration is a weekly task — which raises the questions of who does that administration and how easy the platform makes it. See our mobile credentials guide for the card-versus-phone side of this.
Does head office already run a platform?
If your office is part of a larger organisation, ask this before evaluating anything, because the answer often ends the evaluation. Companies with multiple sites frequently standardise on one access control platform so credentials, administration and reporting work centrally. A Perth office of a national or international firm may be told the platform rather than choose it — and that is usually the right outcome, even when a different product might have suited the single site better.
In that case your real decision is not the platform but the local delivery: who installs it to the corporate standard, and who supports it in Perth when something faults at 7am.
Enterprise versus mid-market platforms
Security platforms come in tiers, and the honest question is which tier your situation justifies. At the enterprise end sit platforms such as Gallagher and Inner Range — the kind of systems chosen by organisations running many doors across many sites, with dedicated administrators and formal compliance requirements. They are deep, capable, and correspondingly more to buy, license and administer.
Mid-market systems — including established alarm platforms from the likes of Bosch, DSC and Ajax — cover what most single-tenancy offices actually need: intrusion detection, access control at the doors that matter, and remote management, without enterprise administration overhead.
The mistake runs in both directions. Buying enterprise for a twenty-person office means paying for depth nobody will administer. Buying the cheapest panel for a growing multi-site firm means replacing it in three years. Match the tier to the organisation, not to the brochure — and be wary of any seller whose answer is always the top shelf.
The building is part of the system
In a CBD tower your tenancy security sits inside the building's: base-building access control at the ground floor, lift access to your floor, building CCTV in common areas. Some buildings can extend their access system into tenancies; others leave the tenancy entirely to you. Either way, your system has boundaries to respect — how staff get from the street to your door after hours, and how your locked doors behave when the building's fire alarm operates, which must be coordinated properly and is work we deliver with our accredited fire partners.
Ask building management what exists and what integrates before designing anything. Duplicating what the building already does well is a common way to overspend.
Maintenance, and who supports it in year three
Every security system is two purchases: the installation, and the relationship that keeps it working. The second is routinely ignored at purchase time and dominates the experience afterwards. Before committing to anything, get answers in writing:
- Who attends faults, and under what arrangements?
- What are the ongoing costs — licensing, monitoring, software updates — over the life of the lease?
- Is the platform supported by multiple companies locally, or does it lock you to one installer? Both can be fine; know which you are choosing.
- Who holds the administrator credentials, and does your own staff get them? (The answer should be you, and yes.)
- Who trains your people to do the routine work — adding staff, pulling footage — without a service call?
The decision, in order
- Write down what you are protecting and what incidents you need to prevent, detect or prove.
- Map who needs access, to what, and how often that changes.
- Ask head office whether a platform standard already exists. If yes, the choice is made — focus on delivery and support.
- Ask the building what it provides and what integrates, so you don't buy it twice.
- Match the platform tier to the organisation — enterprise depth only if you'll administer it.
- Interrogate the support arrangements as hard as the hardware. Then choose.
Notice that the product brand arrived fifth, not first. Most disappointing security systems were decent products bought in the wrong order.